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Can books cure your depression?

Can you read your way to psychological health? Britain is finding out, Leah Price reports in the Boston Globe.

What if a scientist were to discover a treatment that required minimal time and training to administer, and didn’t have the side effects of drugs? In 2003, a psychiatrist in Wales became convinced that he had. Dr. Neil Frude noticed that some patients, frustrated by year-long waits for treatment, were reading up on depression in the meantime. And of the more than 100,000 self-help books in print, a handful often seemed to work.

This June, a program was launched that’s allowing National Health Service doctors across England to act upon Frude’s insight. The twist is that the books are not just being recommended, they’re being prescribed.

Lovereading.co.uk has created an infographic called, ‘The Ultimate Showdown: Books Vs. Films,’ Dianna Dilworth reports on Galleycat, which explores the question, ‘Which is better the book or the movie?’

The graphic explores of reviews of both books and movies over the past two decades and compares the critical reception of both books and their movie adaptations to decide the winners.

—–How can you really help your favorite writer?“Back in 2009, when my career as a novelist went into a nosedive,” Sarah Monette blogs, “somebody asked me what my readers could do to help.”

She didn’t really have an answer then, but five years later, she does and is offering it up “not merely on my own behalf, but so that you all, as readers, know how to help the career of any writer whose work you like. And, as it turns out, the answer is simple.:

There are three major things any reader can do to support a writer, she says:

British journalist Ann Morgan has accomplished a big goal as a reader, Dianna Dilworth reports in Galleycat, she read a book from every country around the world. That is 196 books from authors from Swaziland to Nicaragua.

She came to the decision after she realized that most of the books on her bookshelves were written by British and American authors. To help find titles from various places around the globe, she set up a blog called A Year of Reading the World and got many suggestions about good reads from readers and writers around the worlds.

Artist Benjamin Harff created a 400 page hand-illuminated copy of J.R.R Tolkien’s The Silmarillion for his exam at the Academy of Arts.

All of the initials, calligraphic pages and illumination were drawn by hand using a steel pen and indian ink as well as brushes and watercolour. Harff also created the goat leather binding himself, with some help from a professional bookbinder.